Fred the Barber

The only games I've ever played where framerate mattered were FPS games, and I've rarely played one well enough that I could notice framerate issues. However, I did once get good enough at a game, which I also thoroughly enjoyed playing, to really notice framerate issues. The moment I understood the problem, I did everything I could to get a better experience. In that case it was actually a console game (I'm mostly a dirty console peasant, aside from VNs), and the issue was with the TV; we had two TVs where we'd play big system link games of Halo: CE, and on one of the two TVs, you just... could shoot better than the other. I noticed this after two years and somewhere around a thousand hours of playing the same game on these two TVs. The picture was actually worse on the "good" TV, and it had, I shit you not, a dead fly stuck between a protector in front of the display and the display itself (my roommate named him George), but the framerate was better on it. You just shot better when George The Dead Fly was there to help you. Once you can really feel that difference, the joy of playing the game noticeably decreases if you're subjected to that worse framerate; it really sucks to play a competitive game with a noticeable, avoidable handicap. I haven't ever had that experience since, and I'm certain I wouldn't care about 30 FPS vs. 60 FPS today, unless I reached that same level of play at a competitive game like an FPS or an RTS. If that happened, I doubt I'd be out there having an internet dick-measuring contest about my gaming rig, but you can bet I'd be quietly doing everything I could to make sure I got the best possible experience. Pwning n00bs is serious business.

I just finished two shows: - Bunny Drop was borderline life-changing. Every episode brought little tears of happiness to my eyes, and as I was watching the closing moments of the last episode (not realizing it was the last episode), I thought to myself, "it could end right now and I would be perfectly happy with that." And then, lo and behold, it did. I can't deny I felt a stab of disappointment, but I know there's no way I could be happier with the show. It didn't come to some grand close, or wrap everything up in a neat little bow; some rare shows pull that off, and my hat goes off to them. In the case of Bunny Drop, in fact, there were many important loose ends left behind; but it was nonetheless just right. The most important things had been well and truly settled, and I can imagine the future for myself if I want to carry through on the promises the show left behind. - Yona of the Dawn was also, frankly, amazing. I dearly hope this show gets picked up for another season; I really respect that they managed to gradually build a large and interesting cast while still telling engaging stories along the way, and I'd like to see them get another season to really capitalize on that cast they built up. I also absolutely love the villain - 10/10, best villain ever. I'm still not even sure if he is a villain. This show, at times, reminds me a lot of Avatar: The Last Airbender (which is high praise from me, by the way). I realize it comes from a shoujo manga, but it has a lot of the hallmarks and charm of a typical shounen (many of which are also in Avatar), while also stepping things up a notch in many areas vs. a typical shounen: it's a classic bildungsroman, both literally and figuratively, anchored by a loveable but initially weak person who we watch become stronger, mentally and physically; it surrounds that person with reliable, likeable friends with interesting backstories; but it also gives off a much stronger sense of purpose and a more consistent direction, right from the start, than any shounen anime I've ever seen; and it occasionally shows off a pretty delightful romance (I can't get enough of love polygons, and this show's love triangle is excellent). I wouldn't be surprised if the love story in particular never goes anywhere (except maybe if the show gets picked up strongly enough to go all the way to completion, and we get some nice resolution in a final episode), but otherwise the show hits on all those cylinders and makes real progress pretty regularly. Above all, I love Yona. I can't even handle how awesome she is. As soon as you start to forget how much she can accomplish on the strength of her will alone, she steps up again in some impossible situation and proves, once again, why she's the main character. I totally get why all these dudes are following her around like lapdogs; I'd be right there with them.

I never used to cry from fiction. Then I watched Angel Beats and it broke some sort of dam. Subsequently watching Clannad finished the job. Now it seems like I cry all the dam time.

False. I don't get the appeal; too much risk, too little reward. Stock iOS is fine for me. Next person is behind on Christmas shopping.

MP3 Player? False. Next person has had a malted milkshake before (as distinguished from a regular old milkshake by the presence of delicious, delicious malt)

+1 for buffs / debuffs - I tend to find them useless in most RPGs, but they're generally very strong in Persona games. If you have any characters with multi-ally buffs, those are gold. I don't remember what it was, but Chie's social link rank 10 buff is godly, IIRC. I usually only bust out the buffs and debuffs on bosses, though. If you're having trouble with normal mobs, probably it's time to go build a redonkulous persona for your MC. I like to go for a large variety of elemental attacks (preferring multi-target over strength). I think I had a ludicrously powerful Black Frost as my go-to at the point you are in the game. Also, don't overlook the instant-kill abilities; I didn't really pick up on them at first until a bit later in the game, but they're quite powerful because a lot of the trash enemies will have a weakness to one or the other of Light and Dark, making the likelihood of it working high, and also giving you a One More (or whatever it's called...) for hitting their weakness. With the multi-target versions, those abilities can often wipe out most or all of the enemies for you within the first turn.

The only VN with aliens that I've read (that I recall...) is OsanaDai. The only alien-specific memorable moment, for me, was when Qoo said "and since she's a starship, you can come inside her as much as you want without worrying!" That I remember that moment doesn't make me especially proud. Anyway, that's obviously in reference to a heroine who's better classified as "robot" rather than "alien", but clearly applies equally to both (barring some elaborate explanation about alien biology, I suppose...). Anyway, I'll make an attempt to answer the questions, since otherwise apparently Dice will get angry, and I probably wouldn't like him when he's angry. 1. Do you like alien heroines? Where would you rank them among robots, cats, demons and all those other things weebs like? (overall, on a grand scope) I don't especially like alien heroines. After a bit of thought, my hierarchy of non-people heroines is: - robots are far and away the most interesting, maybe 1/4 because of Persona 3's Aigis, and 3/4 because artificial intelligence is a fascinating topic and I like to see it portrayed. - other weird human-proxies are roughly all on the same tier, well below robots. I think it's because I think all of these as being basically human, with a presumably different upbringing, rather than fundamentally different; as long as they're all organic, free-range, sentient beings, they're all on a roughly equal footing. Since two actual humans can also have radically different back-stories, given the proper story and setting, none of these human-proxies bring anything so fundamentally different to the table, unlike robots. 2. What kind of VN genre and/or story do you think is the best fit for alien characters? And which one is not, if any? This seems pretty straightforward - I defer to Eclipse's well-formulated answer. 3. As soon as you learn about the alien heroine's existence, what do you expect the story (or route, if applicable) to be about? And how close do they usually play to your expectations/fears? No expectations, really; I've only seen the one VN with aliens (OsanaDai), and it was not the kind of game that would let me draw conclusions about how other games would use that kind of character, unless the answer is supposed to be "I expect it to be a gimmick".

You approx. Eat 8 spiders in your life so there is a pretty high possibility that you already have http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/spiders.asp But then again, http://xkcd.com/250/

True or false, depending on whether you live in the US or Europe. I can't play American Football to speak of, but I can play European Kickball pretty well. Next person doesn't own a pencil sharpener.

False. That kind of thing isn't my bag. Next person isn't really disturbed by insects.

Yeah, FF XIII-2 is a disappointing game in many ways, including that one. Enjoy Lightning Returns, though! The gameplay is awesome.

Persona 4 Golden is a fantastic game, because of the characters. The JRPG gameplay is far from my favorite, but it's good enough to fill the time between the glorious social link gameplay. Persona 3 Portable is, also, fantastic. IMO, the plot of Persona 3 is quite a bit better than the plot of Persona 4, but the characters are definitely a little bit weaker. It's an acceptable tradeoff - although Persona 4 totally kills it on the cast, which lets you forgive any other shortcomings the game may have, Persona 3 is a little more well-rounded. The JRPG combat is still about the same, though (and it's apparently noticeably worse if you play any other version, either vanilla Persona 3 or Persona 3 FES)... Anyway, you shouldn't assume that you don't like JRPG gameplay just because you don't especially like that element of P4G - P4G's JRPG elements are far from the best. The Disgaea series is my favorite series in that arena, but it's way different from the Persona series, so it's not a great comparison to draw. Anyway, you're all wrong about best girl, but I can't fault you, because you probably haven't played Persona 3 yet. If you had, you'd know that Aigis is best girl.

Probably! After all, curry is love, curry is life.

I haven't run into that situation yet, but I think I'd be ok with it. I've been watching Akatsuki no Yona recently, and...

As I understand it, curry made its way to Japan by way of Britain: British people brought it back from their colonies in India, and then took it to Japan with them when doing imperial merchanty things in the mid-1800s. Even that was quite a while ago, so they've had a lot of time to diverge. However, they're nonetheless pretty similar: fried garlic and ginger are the starting point, and then onion (usually well-caramelized) forms the base for both, and often/usually with some amount of tomato. The added spice mix for both is also fairly similar, though not quite the same (I definitely don't know details here, but given the way my wooden spoons are getting dyed by it, I'm certain Japanese curry at least has turmeric just like Indian curries...). The biggest differences, apparently, are the spice mix and the prep of the onions - in Japanese curry, you pretty much caramelize them to oblivion, cooking the onions alone for upwards of an hour until they shrink massively into a little (delicious) brown paste. It makes the curry quite a bit sweeter, and a bit less oniony, than your typical Indian curry. Also, there's Thai curries, which seem to be more directly influenced by India (they didn't, as far as I can tell, come by way of Britain, like Japanese curry), but which taste even more different from Indian curry. And they are also delicious!

Learned some basic steps many years ago, but definitely not enough to count, so: false. I wouldn't mind learning, though. Next person can quickly recite the alphabet backwards.

I started up my DS with the intention of playing Stella Glow, and when it hit the DS home screen I remembered, "Oh yeah, I never actually tried Senran Kagura". So that happened instead. After losing a couple hours in Senran Kagura Burst, I totally get the appeal of the Senran Kagura series, now - they're actually fun games, which just also happen to have a lot of lewd content in them. I was thinking of it as the other way around, which was much less interesting.

Confession: I've been playing Disgaea 5 quite a lot recently, and it talked about curry so much that I started getting really hungry for Japanese curry. There are a few places around here that have it, but I decided that I should try making it myself. At any rate, it came out pretty well the first time, a couple weeks ago, and I made it again just now, and it's good, again. I still have a lot to learn, though; this curry is quite different from the last, though neither better nor worse. Both have things that need to be fixed. But I will prevail. I get stronger with every curry, you see. Someday soon, no doubt, I'll be opening my very own curry house in Seattle - believe it!

True. A recent picture of me: Next person has at least one quotation from The Art of War that they like (in translation is, obviously, ok...)

voidpointer, you should create a VNDB page with what you've read, what you stalled or dropped, and a rough rating for each. It makes it much easier for people to quickly come up with targeted recommendations. Given it seems you're willing to try broader categories of games, as long as they have a strong romance element and aren't overly comedic (seems like a largely comedic common route is annoying for you), might I suggest Comyu? Its qualities are: - primarily a chuunige - with definite romance elements - has H scenes, but not an overabundance of them thrown at you at once - has a largely serious common route - has some comedic moments and characters who are mostly comic relief, to ease the otherwise fairly high tension of the game, but these are definitely not the focus It's also just an excellent-quality game: plot, art, music, etc., are all top-notch. Two things to be aware of, if you do look at Comyu: the route order is almost entirely fixed (the first heroine route you play will definitely be a particular heroine; same with the second). It's possible to make choices that send you to a bad end (though this is actually pretty difficult, to be honest, and not frustrating when it happens due to the game's robust scene selection options), and it's possible to make choices that send you to a heroine route you've already seen (actually pretty easy to do accidentally, sometimes), but otherwise you'll always end up in the next ordered heroine route. I think heroines 3 and 4 maybe can be reversed, but heroine 4 is mostly a pressure release before the big ending anyway. The reason for the fixed order becomes clear as you play later routes - it's just a plot thing. The reason I'm suggesting a chuuni here, although you haven't asked for one, is that I'm going through my own past VNs, and I'm finding that it's hard for me to find a good romance-heavy VN with fairly upbeat endings that doesn't have a ton of joking and playing around during the common route (like, say, Majikoi), which seems to be a pretty big turn-off for you. Chuuni has a tendency to be more serious, so a chuuni with a solid romance element seemed like a good way to go. For the same reason, I'd also suggest Fate/Stay Night, although that one's definitely on the darker side at times. It's another excellent (chuuni) game, though, and I think it fits your qualifications pretty well. I feel like you would find its Heavens Feel route rough and maybe a bit too unpleasant to enjoy, but I bet the other two routes would go over very well with you.

Go go Eclipse-chan! Agreed with Turnip, the Ayesha main story ending is pretty great, and I like the way they present side character stories naturally as you spend time travelling with each character. I also need to go back and do an Ayesha New Game+ to pick up more endings, but I'm torn between that and trying to pick up Rorona instead. So, I decided to do neither of those, and it looks like I'm going to try out Stella Glow today, which I picked up on a lark a week back when Amazon told me that I should buy it. I'll report back here on actual enjoyability.

False, but I think only because I didn't know about it before. I have yet to find an actually good way to navigate this site, but I limp along with "New Content" for now... Next person is reading Kaguya's chuuni Fuwa-fiction blog.

Competency/capability: if I feel like that person could get along just great in life on their own, and nonetheless is interested, that's super attractive. Ageha in KonoSora is probably the best example; she may not be a genius like Amane, but I wouldn't want anybody but Ageha building my glider. So to speak. So, ... Comyu?

Not a Disgaea fan? You should fix that. I bought a PS4 for two reasons: Disgaea 5 and Persona 5. Unfortunately, at the moment I don't actually have a PS4 - it needs to get repaired so I can get back to my delightful Disgaea 5.

The bolded is the reason Accel World is the worst anime I've experienced in my 1 year anime career thus far, seriously that character was built to make me rage, and no, the "if you hate a villain, they are doing their job" does not apply!!! Couldn't agree more. This one is a case of "If you hate the villain, it's because the writers are actually inhuman robots who were once explained the idea of a villain, but didn't really get it, and thus wrote about an inhuman robot like themselves". Kind of flamebait, but nonetheless how I actually feel: it's actually even worse than the Shuffle! anime in this regard. Anyway, I actually came back to this thread to rave about Bunny Drop, not to rage about Accel World: I just finished up through episode 5 of Bunny Drop and got rekt again. I'm pretty sure that I, Fred the Barber, precisely, am the target market for this anime. I want to live main character's life, warts, thorns, and all. I mean, I'm pretty much living the negative parts of it already (although I, like him, perceive them as enjoyable and satisfying at the moment); can I have the amazing, life-changingly wonderful parts as well? Please? For the love of kami-sama, somebody put me into a situation where I'm forced to adopt a surprisingly mature, loveable 6-year-old; right now, I feel like there's nothing out there that could make me happier.